We have not as yet utilized this joy of association in relation to the system of factory production which is so preeminently one of large bodies of men working together for hours at a time. But there is no doubt that it would bring a new power into modern industry if the factory could avail iself of that esprit de corps, that triumphant buoyancy which the child experiences when he feels his complete identification with a social group; that sense of security which comes upon him sitting in a theatre or "at a party," when he issues forth from himself and is lost in a fairy land which has been evoked not only by his own imagination, but by that of his companions as well. This power of association, of assimilation, which children-possess in such a high degree, is easily carried over into the affairs of youth if it but be given opportunity and freedom for action, as it is in the college life of more favored young people. The esprit de corps of an athletic team, that astonishing force of co-operation, is, how-( 173)-ever, never consciously carried over into industry, but is persistently disregarded. It is, indeed, lost before it is discovered -- if I may be permitted an Irish bull -- in the case of children who are put to work before they have had time to develop the power beyond its most childish and haphazard manifestations.
Factory life depends upon groups of people working together, and yet it is content with the morphology of the the group, as it were, paying no attention to its psychology, to the interaction of its members. By regarding each producer as a solitary unit, a tremendous power is totally unutilized.
In the case of children who are prematurely put to work under such conditions, an unwarranted nervous strain is added as they make their effort to stand up to the individual duties of life while still in the stage of group and family dependence.
We naturally associate a factory with orderly productive action; but similarity of action, without identical thought and co-operative intelligence, is coercion, and not order. The present factory discipline needs to be redeemed as the old school discipline has been redeemed. In the latter the system of prizes and punishments has been largely given up, not only because they were difficult to ( 174) administer, but because they utterly failed to free the powers of the child.
"The fear of starvation," of which the old economists made so much, is, after all, but a poor incentive to work; and the appeal to cupidity by which a man is induced to "speed up" in all the various devices of piece-work is very little better. Yet the factory still depends upon these as incentives to the ordinary workers. Certainly one would wish to protect children from them as long as possible. In a soap factory in Chicago little girls wr[ap]
bars of soap in two covers at the minimum rate of 3,000 bars a week; their only ambition is to wrap as fast as possible and well enough to pass the foreman's inspection. The girl whose earnings are the largest at the end of the week is filled with pride - praiseworthy, certainly, but totally without educational value.
Let us realize before it is too late that in this age of iron, of machine-tending, and of sub" divided labor, we need as never before the untrammeled and inspired activity of youth. To cut it off from thousands of working children is a most perilous undertaking, and endangers the very industry to which they have been sacrificed.
Only of late years has an effort been made by the city authorities, by the municipality itself, to conserve the play instinct and to utilize it, if not ( 175) for the correction of industry, at least for the nurture of citizenship. It has been discovered that the city which is too careless to provide playgrounds, gymnasiums, and athletic fields where the boys legitimately belong and which the policeman is bound to respect, simply puts a premium on lawlessness. Without these places of their own, groups of boys come to look upon the policeman as an enemy, and he regards them as the most lawless of all the citizens. This is partly due to the fact that because of our military survivals the officer is not brought in contact with the educational forces of the city, but only with its vices and crime. He might have quite as great an opportunity for influencing the morals of youth as the school teacher has. At least one American city spends twenty per cent. more in provision for the conviction of youths than for their education, for the city which fails to utilize this promising material of youthful adventure does not truly get rid of it, and finds it more expensive to care for as waste material than as educative material.
